Unofficial news and tips about Google

August 9, 2007

Pay for More Gmail Storage

Google will start to use a model similar to Picasa Web's premium plans to let you buy more storage for different Google services, including Gmail. So for $20 a year, you'll get 6 GB that can be used to store photos in Picasa Web Albums and to send or receive messages in Gmail. It's unclear whether Google intends to add other services, but Google Docs and Page Creator are possible candidates.

You can manage your storage options from this page. Here are the current plans for upgrade:

* 6 GB ($20.00 per year)

* 25 GB ($75.00 per year)

* 100 GB ($250.00 per year)

* 250 GB ($500.00 per year)

(Note: Initially, the price for the 6 GB option was $1, but Google quickly changed it to $20.)

In February, Sergey Brin announced that Google "will start selling additional storage capacity to e-mail users with extraordinary needs". While not many people need more than 2.8 GB for storing mail, the unified storage could be more useful because you can manage it dynamically, like a virtual hard drive.

So the good news is that you have more storage options: Picasa Web costs much less, you can upgrade your Gmail storage in case you run out of space and GDrive is closer. The bad news is that others offer better prices: Yahoo Mail offers unlimited storage for free, Flickr gives you unlimited storage for $25 a year and Microsoft's SkyDrive is already here.